A U.S. District Court judge on Friday issued a ruling invalidating a Federal Election Commission regulation that has allowed donors to so-called dark-money groups to remain anonymous, the latest development in a years-long legal battle that could have major implications for campaign finance.

Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled the FEC's current regulation of such groups, including 501(c) 4 non-profits, fails to uphold the standard Congress intended when it required the disclosure of politically related spending.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia -- The government's star witness in the financial fraud trial of Paul Manafort testified Monday that he embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the former Trump campaign chairman - and told jurors that he and Manafort committed crimes together.

Rick Gates has been regarded as a crucial witness for the government ever since he pleaded guilty this year to two felony charges and agreed to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

When the price of Daraprim shot up from $13.50 to $750 a pill in 2015, doctors and patient advocates were shocked because the patent on the decades-old AIDS drug had expired long ago.

Even if a generic drug maker had wanted to develop a cheaper alternative, executives at Turing Pharmaceuticals — the drug company founded by convicted hedge fund fraudster Martin Shkreli — made clear that they had no intention of making Daraprim available to rival companies to make their own versions.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement last week means that the court could become even more of a rubber stamp for rolling back important voting rights protections that prevent discrimination and weaken Americans’ ability to have their voices heard in our democracy.

Although Justice Kennedy was a swing vote for some of the court’s most high-profile cases that expanded marriage equality and protected a woman’s right to choose, he was on the wrong side of history when he joined with conservative justices to weaken the Civil Rights Act. And he opened the floodgates to unlimited dark money in our political system with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

In the past decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has twice weighed in on collective rights to political speech. With its first gambit, Citizens United v. FEC, it affirmed this associational freedom. What individuals have the liberty to do alone, opined Justice Antonin Scalia, they have a liberty to do together—even if some shareholders might object to the whole business. In its second maneuver, Janus v. AFSME, the court violated a fundamental tenet of political equality. It refused the same array of associational rights to unions for no discernable legitimate reason. For the union, but not for the corporation, it permitted the existence of an individual dissenter to undermine the rights of the majority.

When it comes to enforcing collective rights, courts face an intractable dilemma. There’s always a possibility that a minority within the group might object to how the rest would like to wield their collective right. Unless some kind of bargain can be struck, protecting the rights of some occasionally requires impugning those of others. To give a famous and theoretically seminal example, allowing the francophone Québécois majority the right to maintain French as its official language means denying the Anglophone minority’s right to speak English at its convenience. The other option, refusing to mandate French as the official language, might lead to the disintegration of francophone culture and, consequently, a failure to respect the rights of those who value their francophone identity. There are no easy solutions. Nevertheless, in these kinds of situations, the court must pick a winner: the dissenter or the majority. Or it can try to find a compromise that no one is happy with. It’s a tough and context-sensitive question, and political philosophers across the ideological spectrum—from Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib to Joseph Raz and Brian Barry, from Chandran Kukathas to Charles Taylor—have dedicated tomes of hard work in an as-yet unresolved effort to solve the problem in a fair and impartial way.

Corporate PACs are increasing their contributions to several Democrats who are in line to lead powerful committees if their party retakes the House in November, another sign of the burgeoning expectations for Democrats’ showing in the midterms.

The uptick comes as tensions grow in the party between lawmakers who rake in money from corporate PACs and the activists who decry such contributions as a corrupting influence.

Here Are the Special Interests Illegally Funding Formerly GOP-Aligned Dems in NY

A judge ruled the committees and their campaign contributions were illegal. A New York State Board of Elections official ordered the candidates to return the illegal contributions. But the candidates won’t do it.

Eight former members of the Republican-aligned Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) have benefited from nearly $1.6 million in fund transfers and expenditures from two IDC-affiliated committees since 2011, which together raised over $4.6 million, excluding a transfer from one to the other, a Sludge analysis of state elections board data found. After breaking campaign finance rules and paying a $27,400 fine in 2016 for missing numerous reporting deadlines, the senators disbanded The IDC Initiative and formed a new committee, the Senate Independence Campaign Committee (SICC). Most of this spending has since been ruled illegal.

A Washington consultant who advised a Ukrainian political party and worked with a co-defendant of Paul Manafort pleaded guilty Friday to failing to register as a foreign lobbyist while working on behalf of a Ukrainian political party.

W. Samuel Patten, 47, of Washington, D.C., was charged with one count of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register with the Justice Department when he represented a Ukrainian political party known as the Opposition Bloc from 2014 to 2018.

WASHINGTON - The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Thursday to require lobbyists to publicly disclose if they have been convicted of a variety of financial and other crimes, a vote that came just days after the conviction of President Trump's former campaign chairman.

The measure from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and John Kennedy, R-La., passed by voice vote after Paul Manafort was convicted in federal court of tax fraud, bank fraud and failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The trial was the first o Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian influence on the 2016 election and brought to light a host of details about Manafort's lavish lifestyle, especially during his lobbyist days.

JEFFERSON CITY A Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit cut a $3 million check over the weekend to a political action committee seeking to boost Missouri’s minimum wage to $12 an hour.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money nonprofit that isn’t required to reveal its donors, already donated $500,000 last year and $500,000 in May to a PAC called Raise Up Missouri, which collected enough signatures to place a minimum wage hike on the November ballot.

The state's highest court on Thursday unanimously upheld a ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns.

The Supreme Judicial Court, in a 32-page decision written by Chief Justice Ralph Gants, found the ban does not violate businesses' First Amendment rights, and does serve a legitimate purpose in preventing corruption.

With the balance of power in Congress at stake in just under two months, the influential conservative Koch political network has added another campaign-finance weapon to its arsenal, a new super PAC.

The new entity, called Americans for Prosperity Action, is a sister organization to Koch-backed nonprofit Americans for Prosperity, which describes its mission as fighting for less regulation, lower taxes and "economic prosperity for all."

New York Special Interests Unload Outside Money to Help GOP-Aligned Dems

After a group of rogue state Senate Democrats disbanded their Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), which aligned with Republicans for seven years to give the GOP control of the chamber and blocked progressive legislation on voting rights, health care and abortion, support from its special-interest donors doesn’t appear to have wavered.

Some of the same unions, charter school backers, hospital and real estate interests that backed these renegade Democrats when the IDC was active have continued to spend large amounts of money to boost their 2018 reelection campaigns, including Sens. Jeff Klein of the Bronx, David Valesky of Syracuse and Marisol Alcantara, who represents the 31st Senate District, covering west Manhattan.

It’s well known that a run for a big office needs big money backing it, but up and down the ballot, budgets have been swelling, and not only in the U.S.’s largest cities. Several localities—including Portland, Denver, and Baltimore—have initiatives in motion to overhaul the system either by driving down the dollar amounts each person can give or solicit, piloting public financing projects that make each donated dollar go further, or both. The overarching goal is to keep big money and its influence out of local politics, and to give all candidates a fair shot.

In Denver, voters will decide on an expansive reform package, including a contribution cap and a generous matching fund. Baltimore’s city council has unanimously passed a charter amendment that would create a similar small-dollar matching system, if Mayor Catherine Pugh approves it and passes it along to the fall ballot. And before Portland, Oregon, phases in its own public financing measure in 2020, voters will decide on a strict local contribution cap this November.

All the Politicians Who Have Signed the Pledge for Free and Fair Elections

Wolf-PAC invited candidates and elected officials from across the country to sign a pledge showing voters that they stand with the American people and not big monied interests. Those who sign the Free & Fair Elections Amendment Pledge agree to support all pathways – including an Article V Convention – that lead to a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addressing the issue of campaign finance reform.

Activists in Maine have raised more than $1 million dollars in a crowdfunded effort to get Sen. Susan Collins to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The Maine’s People’s Alliance has banded together with the Mainers for Accountable Leadership and Ady Barkan, a dying father who has campaigned for healthcare reform, to ask Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, to vote no on Kavanaugh. If not, they will donate the money to Collins’s next Democratic challenger.

Activists in Maine have raised more than $1 million dollars in a crowdfunded effort to get Sen. Susan Collins to oppose the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The Maine’s People’s Alliance has banded together with the Mainers for Accountable Leadership and Ady Barkan, a dying father who has campaigned for healthcare reform, to ask Collins, a Republican senator from Maine, to vote no on Kavanaugh. If not, they will donate the money to Collins’s next Democratic challenger.

Republicans may finally have to face the truth of their deceit and rotten political corruption

Call me a sentimental fool (pipe down out there) but I keep waiting for the big Frank Capra moment that rationally, I know may never come – you know, like the climax of Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington when the corrupt, patrician senator played by Claude Rains, finally undone by the truth told by Senator Jefferson Smith (earnestly played by Jimmy Stewart), tries to shoot himself.

“I’m not fit to be a senator! I’m not fit to live!” he cries. “Every word that boy said about… me and graft and the rotten political corruption of my state is true!”